MILITARY WOMEN TEMPERED BY WAR

Pentagon’s policy change reflects the reality of how their roles have expanded

Army National Guard Staff Sgt. Brooke Parras (left) and Spc. Nichole Lee, shown last week, were deployed together in Iraq in 2008. Lee encountered her first major roadside bomb within a week or two into her deployment. John Gastaldo • U-T

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Army National Guard Staff Sgt. Brooke Parras (left) and Spc. Nichole Lee, shown last week, were deployed together in Iraq in 2008. Lee encountered her first major roadside bomb within a week or two into her deployment. John Gastaldo • U-T

The Defense Department announced last week that it plans to open more than 14,000 military jobs to women that had been off-limits to them, at least on paper, because of restrictions on their service in combat.

Pentagon leaders acknowledged that the policy change was catching up with reality because women have long since proved themselves in battle in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Changing sentiments and the wartime needs of military commanders accelerated an expansion of responsibilities for women that had been growing for decades.

The lack of clear front lines against an insurgency, staffing shortages at the height of the conflicts and cultural sensitivities of Iraqi and Afghan civilians that barred men from performing some critical functions in the war zone helped spur the transition, along with complaints that combat restrictions unfairly limited career advancement for women.

The result is that today female service members fight by land, air and sea.

Officially, they have been allowed to serve in air combat and on warships since the mid-1990s. Unofficially, through an administrative sleight of hand that has them “attached” but not formally assigned, they also serve with all-male ground combat units, walking on patrol with the infantry and supporting special-operations personnel in the field.

For example, when 29-year-old Army Sgt. 1st Class Kristoffer Domeij of San Diego was killed in October by a bomb attack in southern Afghanistan, a female National Guard soldier died with him. 1st Lt. Ashley White, 24, was attached to the unit as a Cultural Support Team member.

Considering the impending policy change, Staff Sgt. Brooke Parras said, “The verbiage has caught up with the times.” Parras, 32, is an Iraq War veteran and a platoon commander with the California National Guard border support mission ending in San Diego County.

The U.S. military’s active-duty force of about 1.4 million troops includes about 205,000 women. More than 140 female service members have been killed and 860 wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan.

There is no safe spot for them in the war zone. Bases are rocketed. Supposedly friendly forces turn their guns on trainers. Roads are pocked with hidden explosives.

The main trigger-puller jobs in the ground combat arms will remain closed to women pending further review. While the debate over ending that final frontier continues, female troops are exposing themselves to mortal danger every day in the war zone.

“Women are contributing in unprecedented ways to the military’s mission,” demonstrating their ability to serve in an expanding number of roles on and off the battlefield, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said.

Here are some of those women from San Diego County installations who set aside personal safety to serve their nation at war.

Attack helicopter pilot

Vernice Armour, 38, a Marine veteran previously assigned to Camp Pendleton, had always been an adrenaline junkie. In 1999, when she couldn’t get a slot in flight school for fighter jets, she studied nonstop so she could be first in line for the AH-1 helicopter gunship. “I said if I have to fly helos I want to fly the baddest thing out there, and that was Cobras,” she recalled.

During the 2004 battle for An-Najaf, Iraq, Armour was flying one of the attack helicopter pilots darting low over the cemetery and Marines fighting on foot.

When a squad was pinned down, in danger of being overrun, Armour’s Cobra came to the rescue with a missile attack despite being low on fuel. Later one of the Marines told her, “Man, you saved my life.”

“That’s what it’s about over there, not whether you have to go to a separate bathroom or have separate sleeping quarters. It’s about watching and protecting each other’s back,” whether you’re male or female, Armour said.

The bomb technician

When Nichole Robinette joined the Navy in 2006 to become a bomb disposal technician, she simply wasn’t strong enough to make the cut.

Men and women must pass the same test, which includes performing a minimum of six pull-ups and 42 push-ups after a 500-meter swim. So she trained and trained, strapping weights to herself for pull-up after brutal pull-up.

Now Robinette, 32, is among the 1 percent of enlisted Navy bomb technicians who are women.

She returned recently from a six-month deployment to Afghanistan, where she helped destroy roadside bombs. The job requires lifting the unit’s 100-pound robot on and off trucks and fast-roping out of helicopters with at least 70 pounds of gear.

The 5-foot-5 former college ice hockey goalie knows she has to perform as well as a 6-foot-3 sailor with more natural strength. “I can’t just stop and be like, ‘Hey, can one of you guys come over here and do this for me?’ ” she said.

If women are going to have a larger place on the battlefield, Robinette thinks the training and requirements should be the same for both sexes.

“The enemy is not going to say, ‘I can’t use this gun today because I’m going to shoot at a woman.’ The threat is the same regardless if you are a woman or a man, so the preparation needs to be the same.”

Female Engagement Team

Many conservative Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan would be offended if a foreign man tried to talk to women in their family or pat them down for weapons. So the Army and Marine Corps experimented with the Lioness program in Iraq, sending female troops to do some of the tasks that were off-limits for men.

In recent years the Marine Corps developed the program into dedicated Female Engagement Teams. Sgt. Sheena Adams, 26, a mechanic by training, led a team of three women during her tour last year to Musa Qalah, Afghanistan. Now at Camp Pendleton, she helps instruct new teams heading into the war zone.

Her job on foot patrol with the infantry battalion was to connect with Afghan women and gather information that might help the international coalition win over the locals or fight the insurgency, by assessing their needs, helping them start small businesses and establishing a school for their children.

“The females have completely different concerns,” Adams said, such as health care and education instead of irrigation and general security. “We got to see both sides of it.”

Still, when the bullets started zinging, Adams was a rifleman first. When they were shot at, she fired back. And when the vehicle she was riding in triggered a 60-pound bomb, she helped pull the wounded gunner out of the truck.

“We’re Marines just like everyone else. If we’re getting shot at, I have to protect the Marine next to me,” Adams said.

Ultimate sacrifice

Maj. Megan McClung was disappointed that after graduating from the Naval Academy she couldn’t join the infantry, so she became a Marine public affairs officer.

Her father, Mike McClung, thought it would make for great civilian career opportunities. That wasn’t the point, she told him. “No, I’m going where the infantry and the tankers go and I don’t have to worry about the paperwork,” he recalled her saying.

As a high school freshman in Mission Viejo, McClung had successfully petitioned the school board to be allowed into the boys-only weightlifting class.

She was fearless despite her petite frame and 5-foot-4 height, and it was the same when she served in Iraq. “Like most young people, Megan didn’t believe she was going to get killed,” her father said.

During her tour for the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, the Camp Pendleton Marine often escorted journalists around the battlefield. On Dec. 6, 2006, McClung, 34, was killed by a roadside bomb explosion in Ramadi — the first female Marine officer to die in the war.

Her father, a Marine Vietnam War veteran, said McClung knew military life was dangerous. “I regret that Megan didn’t get to live longer than she did. I regret that I didn’t get to spend more time with her than I did,” he said, “but I would not change a thing about her life.”